538 ChaPter^10
Cultural Resistance in the Time of Reagan
Ronald Reagan evoked strong feelings in virtually every American. He was
beloved by many, as shown by his overwhelming election victories in 1980
and 1984, but also deeply disliked by millions. Whether loved or hated,
Reagan surely made an imprint on American culture in the 1980s, and there-
after. Coming off decades of intense protest that took on cultural overtones
with shows like Laugh-In, All In The Family, The Jeffersons, M*A*S*H, or the
earliest seasons of Saturday Night Live, Americans settled in with Reagan to
relive a past, often mythical, more reminiscent of the Cleavers than Archie and
Edith Bunker, or Hawkeye and Trapper John. Shows like Family Ties debuted,
featuring Michael J. Fox as a young man whose rebellion against his hippie
parents involved wearing a suit every day, investing in the stock market, and
idolizing Reagan. The Cosby Show, featuring the famed comedian Bill Cosby,
was not explicitly political [and Cosby himself was a liberal Democrat] but
the family was straight out of the 1950s, with dad being a doctor, mom a
lawyer, and the kids getting [mostly] good grades in school and staying out of
any serious trouble. While Alex P. Keaton, Fox’s character on Family Ties, may
have been a budding Republican, there was an emerging culture that resisted
Reaganism in many ways, especially music.
In the mid-1970s a new musical form blew up and blew in from England,
Punk. Angry and explicitly political, bands like The Sex Pistols and The Clash
ranted against Britain’s royal family and political system with lyrics like the
Sex Pistol’s “God save the queen/It’s a fascist regime/They made you a
moron/A potential H-bomb” or “I am an antichrist/I am an anarchist.” The
Clash was more overtly radical than anarchist, writing anti-police songs like
“Guns of Brixton,”—“When they kick at your front door/How you gonna
come?/With your hands on your head/Or on the trigger of your gun.” Their
commercial breakthrough album was titled Sandinista, named after the revo-
lutionary government in Nicaragua, and included “Washington Bullets,” a
harsh attack on Reagan’s wars in Central America and a history lesson, “And
in the Bay of Pigs in 1961, Havana fought the Playboy [JFK] in the Cuban
Sun/For Castro is a color/Is a redder than red/Those Washington Bullets
want Castro dead/For Castro is the color... that will earn you a spray of
lead.” Soon, punk came over to the U.S., where some bands were already
playing angry, thrashing music with overtly political lyrics. Virtually unknown